Yeah, the lack of comments makes regular JSON not a good configuration format in my view. Also, putting all keys in quotes and the use of commas is annoying. The big upside is that’s in lots of standard libraries.
I think the appeal with YAML is that is has comments, is kind of easy to write and read and also provides unlimited nesting levels. But it has all its drawbacks, no question. Forbidding tabs, thousands of different string flavors, having so many boolean options (poor Norwegians) etc. I use it, but I don’t particularly enjoy it.
Among simple key value pairs, I like INI files, but with # for comments, not ;. I never used TOML, read up on it yesteray before writing this question, but it looks a bit weird and has some strange rules. I guess I have to give it a try one day.
And yes, as mentioned by several of you, it always depends on the complexity of the configuration at hand.
I’m developing something for the scouts at the moment with rather simple requirements on the config. Currently, there are just four settings. Even INI would be overkill with its section. I selected JSON for now, because that’s readily available with Go’s std lib. But I do not like it.
Btw. what’s your own config format, @xuu@txt.sour.is?